Within the context of home organizing and design, the best gift you can give yourself is a healthy definition of being organized.
Being organized is not having your house look like it could be photographed for House Beautiful magazine.
Being organized is not having your closets and pantries outfitted with numerous containers and devices from The Container Store.
Being organized isn’t even doing your dishes right after dinner, folding your clothes right after they get dried, or putting away every extraneous piece of paper on your counter by the end of each day.
Being organized simply means you know what you have, you know where to find it, and you can use your spaces for the purpose for which you intend them. What I mean by that last part is that if, for example, you want your living room to be a place for watching TV and relaxing, then you have a TV in the corner and several uncluttered places for people to sit. It’s more about how a space functions, than how it looks. Being organized is not even a destination. It’s a choice you make each and every day to minimize clutter in your life, so you can focus on the things that are more important.
So please relax your expectations for yourself and for your house, especially you stay-at-home moms. Find ways to streamline your possessions, so there is less to put away and clean around. Try to spend 5 minutes in the main rooms of your house putting things away each night. Call in a professional organizer if you are extremely dissatisfied or anxious about your house. Otherwise, let go of that vision of a home that could have come straight out of a magazine.
After all, an immaculate house is a house where there are no inhabitants.